Research & Innovation Library

In a state as large as Texas, it would be inefficient – and nearly impossible – to transfer every neonate to a Level IV NICU. That’s why Children’s Health℠ and UT Southwestern developed one of the nation’s most comprehensive TeleNICU programs. Along the way, we solved thorny compliance and legal problems, built our own telemedicine platform and created a model that keeps costs low for partner hospitals.

Our program is helping neonates stay closer to home, lowering health care costs and letting partner hospitals keep more neonatal patients in-house – and it could be a model for other pediatric centers to follow.

Transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement (TPVR) has revolutionized care for many children with heart problems, but one group is often left out: patients with dilated right ventricular outflow tracts. Traditionally, open-heart surgery has been their only option because their outflow tracts are too big to accommodate transcatheter valves. But this may soon change thanks to the Edwards Alterra Adaptive Prestent – a self-expanding, stent-like device that creates a “landing zone” for transcatheter valves.

Children’s Health℠ is one of four sites in a Phase I trial of the innovative device, which is used in combination with the SAPIEN 3 Transcatheter Heart Valve System. Preliminary results are promising, with many children.

We are continuing to make significant strides at the Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI). CRI is now home to 44 researchers who continue to focus on biomedical research that has the potential to change scientific fields and yield new strategies for treating diseases that would impact countless children in Texas and beyond. We’re focusing our research efforts at the interface of regenerative medicine, cancer biology and metabolism, because those three areas are intricately involved in the way healthy and diseased cells function in the body, offering significant opportunities to increase our knowledge and make progress toward the treatments of tomorrow.

Pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Lopez began working with children and adolescents with gender dysphoria—a condition in which a person does not identify with the gender assigned at birth—and quickly became an advocate in the process.

The Children’s Health Research Administration department has created a new position to support your grant writing efforts. Randy McMillan, Ph.D. wants to help you make your application even stronger and can offer you a better chance of getting funded.